Not all of these are necessarily newly created institutions, or offering Islamic financial services for the first time. But their fresh inclusion in the ranking demonstrates the growing availability of data on the sector from even the most frontier of markets.Of these new banks, Kauthar in Azerbaijan supplied full data on its sharia-compliant assets, which at $21.4m bring the bank in at 308th place in the ranking. Kauthar's 70% rise in profits in 2009 bodes well for its future in a predominantly Muslim and hydrocarbon-rich economy.
Some of the most undeveloped markets have also contributed new entrants, including three new banks in Afghanistan and one in Djibouti. There is also Al Ameen in India - a country with the third largest Muslim population in the world, but a relatively small Islamic banking sector, with reported sharia-compliant assets of just $23m.
Information on subsidiaries of existing institutions is also becoming more readily available. This includes Islamic banks that have set up takaful (Islamic insurance) subsidiaries, or insurance companies that have set up banking subsidiaries. The largest new entrant, Iran's Sina Bank, falls into this category. With Shariah-compliant assets of $2.8bn, the bank enters the ranking straight at number 71. It was formed by a financial services group that includes Sina Insurance, which has been in the rankings for some years, but does not yet supply data of its own. Iran's Day Bank and Qatar's Doha Insurance are other examples of banking and insurance spin-offs from existing financial groups.
Regulatory trends are also pushing for greater transparency and reporting. Standard Chartered Bank in Pakistan has supplied data for the assets of its sharia-compliant unit for the first time, even though the parent company, UK-headquartered Standard Chartered Saadiq, has declined to provide data.
In addition, central banks are increasingly pushing conventional banks that operate Islamic windows to turn those units into legally separate institutions, to avoid any mingling of sharia-compliant and conventional funds. In last year's rankings, this development was particularly noticeable in Malaysia. This year, it has taken hold in Indonesia. Two of the largest reporting and one non-reporting new entrants are the newly separated, fully sharia compliant banks created by conventional Indonesian parents - Rakyat, Bukopin and Panin.
In addition to financial institutions that have entered the ranking for the first time, there are also 38 institutions that were previously in the ranking but have provided sharia-compliant asset data for the first time this year. This takes the total proportion of institutions reporting data over the 50% threshold for the first time, to 348 out of the 654 included in the ranking. By far the greatest progress has been made in Kuwait, where seven institutions with assets totalling $3.4bn have added their figures to the survey. The Islamic financial sector still has a long way to go on transparency, but every new bank added helps provide a better snapshot for all the ranking's users.
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